IMPORTANT QUESTIONS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18397, 15 May 1934, Page 6

IMPORTANT QUESTIONS

THE LEAGUE COUNCIL SAAR PLEBISCITE GRAN CHACO WARFARE (British Official Wireless.) Rec. 2 p.m. RUGBY, May 14. The League Council, which begins its seventy-ninth meeting at Geneva today, has several important and intricate problems on the agenda. The principal questions for consideration are the organisation of the Saar plebiscite; the League plan of assistance to the- Liberian Republic, whose treatment of some of its subjects has again, provoked strict action; the war in the Own Chaco between Bolivia and Paraguay, which is the subject of a report by the League committee ; consideration of the problem of technical assistance to China: and consideration of a request from the Hungarian Government for action by the League in connection with a series of incidents and difficulties on tho Hungary-Jugo-Slavia frontier. The report on the Boliviau-Pnraguay dispute is a striking document', signed bv .all members of the commission, consisting of representatives of France, Britain, Italy, Spain, and Mexico. The Times describes it as an “object lesson of the horrors, hatred, misdirection of human energies, destruction of wealth, and waste of human life which follow ,the refusal of rival States to come to!any sensible agreement between themselves, or to accept the arbitral proposals of the League, it seems as if nothing would bring the war to an end except the complete exhaustion of the combatants, grimly struggling in ,a region which is infected with disease, where -wounded cannot be properly attended, to which young men of either country are being drawn as into a vortex of destruction. The, two belligerent Governments are, of course, primarily responsible, but there is nothing to be said for flic foreign arms manufacturers who know that their profits can only come from ,a continuation of the mutual slaughter.” The report draws attention to the danger of the hostilities spreading, and takes the view that the draft treaty of peace already put forward remains the best settlement.